She said nobody’s got shit new to say. That was the same day we saw him. Benz. Bocasucia was pushing a stolen supermarket cart full of groceries down the steepest block on Sugar Hill. That one, between Convent and St. Nicholas Ave. One of the wheels was stuck so the cart kept moving opposite how he wanted to push it, and his thin arms could hardly control the damn thing. The grownups kept cursing at him. Jodio, they said, getoutdefucckenway! Aguelita was way behind him, walking slow, cane out front. I wasn’t ashamed right away I didn’t go help her. I wasn’t.
When she’d asked me to go to the supermarket that morning I’d pretended I had a stomach ache, texted Bocasucia to see if he could lend Aguelita a hand. Fo’sho’, he responded, but you owe me. No surprise there. Bocasucia means dirty mouth in Spanish. He got his nickname because he loves going down on girls. Seriously. No reciprocity needed, is what the fool would say to us. Had to look up the word reciprocity the first time he said it. Signed myself up for word of the day in case he kept using fancy words. Even after I got it means mutual exchange, which he was saying wasn’t required, I was like – no way. Hands gesturing to the left-to the left just like Beyoncé. Money, he would say, just text me “what you doin’?” followed by three question marks and I’m in there. Que sucio. But Alma, that day especially, with the wheel moving the cart fast-fast, kept looking at Bocasucia with a sadness in her eyes only shows up after you slept with dudes. I bet she reciprocated. Sucker.
So, the cart finally rebelled, for real, and turned a sharp so sharp it crashed the cart into the Mercedes Benz parked in front of Kennedy’s Fried Chicken. None of us ate there because, well, we all knew why.
When he came out of the brownstone rushing down the steps, to check on the alarm, Bocasucia was long gone. We could always count on Bocasucia to leave the mess for somebody else. He pointed the key fob at the car. Alarm silenced. He was wearing white denim shorts too tight on his body, showing off the most perfect, muscular legs I’d seen on a real man. He wasn’t tall, barely six feet, but so bald, so fit, with skin so dark all the sunlight got sucked into him reflected back to us. I’m still a shade darker than him but it was the first time I ever saw anyone that dark and immediately thought, damn. Beautiful. Finally walked over to Aguelita who was staring helpless at the groceries on the ground. At her feet the usual weekly compra. Platanos, one extra-large Anduveca salami, 3 heads of garlic and two red onions with transparent papery skin lifted ready to float. A ways away, the Tropicana white frying cheese was on its side, the water they use to keep it fresh pooled on the bottom. Next to the cheese, two miracles. A carton with a dozen eggs, lid open, unbroken and next to that a white candle veladora in its jar uncracked. This time of year a candle stays burning in our apartment 24/7 for my dead. Our dead. I reached down and held those two miracle things that should have shattered but didn’t.
The plastic bag of Canilla Long Grain White Rice was the only casualty that day. A perfect line split it open and rice poured out like streams of water out the fire hydrant when it was open all the way, spraying all cars that went by. Through the metal square holes of the cart, each stream spread on the concrete and then mounted a small village right next to the passenger door. Aguelita’s eyes couldn't have seen the dent on the passenger side. Alma was all business, righting the cart, then fixing the wheel because all it needed was a good kick.
“See,” she said, showing off her beautiful dimpled smile.
That smile wasn’t for me. She lifted the bag of rice out of the cart and held it in her arms, like a baby, bringing the two sides together with her hug, saving what was left.
When he knelt next to the car, touching its side with a gentlest fingertip, I remember thinking, thinking. Holy fuck. How come nobody ever touched me gentle like that? He exhaled deeply and I saw how he fought the urge to curse by how tightly he pressed his lips. Aguelita couldn’t have seen the white half-moons of his fingernails had all manner of color of paint. His t-shirt floated like the paper skin of the onions and the garlic. All that floating space meant only one thing – his stomach so flat.
Aguelita struggled to apologize, cane lifted off concrete, into air with the effort. The half of her body that was always falling, always sad, mostly still, pointed to him.
I is, stop.
Sarry, stop.
Yo soy Dominicano, he said, as he stood, eyes on her gentler than that fingertip. Alma and I both swallowed the air that snuck in our mouths. Mine dry and empty. Didn’t ask Alma how her mouth felt. Grains of rice had gotten wedged on the dark skin of his knees, like seeds on dirt. Taking in his entire body, I knew something amazing could grow from there.
Knowing he was Dominican made Aguelita relax. The cane tilted softly on the ground. The half of her face that still worked lifted, shamed. That smile hung around on the daily, ever since that day we’d been in the bathroom together.
“Discupelme,” Grandma said. “Perdoname.”
“Excuse me, forgive me,” I said to Alma who rolled her eyes at me, like duh.
“Those words all end in ‘me’ whether in Spanish or English,” I whispered.
Dimple showed up for me this time, and she pushed my side with her elbows. Proud.
He shook his head, no problem. Glanced at the dent again, shrugged and went back inside, didn’t even look at us, hadn’t even looked at us at all that whole time, even though our shorts were the shortest, our white t-shirts were tied in knots in the back, way high on our waists to better show our stomachs, to better show the dents that dipped our lower backs before our hips spread sideways, backsides seriously bootylicious, like Beyoncé says. We had the best bodies south of Dyckman Street. At least, that’s what Bocasucia said. But Benz, he didn’t notice us.
“I’m gonna do him,” I told Alma, later that day.
We were in Alma’s apartment. She and her Mom lived in a studio on the 3rd floor of my building. Aguelita’s place up on the 5th floor was a two-bedroom apartment three times this size. We always ended up in Alma’s apartment because her Mom was always working and gone, or not working and gone. While Aguelita was always home, always. My Moms? Gone my whole life. I never even met her. Dads? Everybody’s in jail. Every body. Even Alma’s who was a dentist before he got locked up for doing illegal abortions over on Nothar Park. Well, it probly wasn’t the abortion that got him locked up but the girl who died over one.
“Who?” she said, “Benz driver?”
I nodded.
“By next week,” I said, “I’ll be butt naked in his bed.”
“Listen,” Alma said, holding my palm upright, “I know how this will end.”
“How?” I asked.
Fingernail shaped like a claw, bedazzled with fake diamonds traced lines on my palm. That manicure cost. It cost.
“With you, played.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t care?” she asked.
“I’m familiar with how that goes.”
She pushed my hand away. Hard. Her laughter hollow inside the cave of her pressed lips, flat palm on her concave stomach.
“You’re always boy crazy,” she said. “Only virgin I know always crushing so hard and never go all the way.”
She got off the couch and went over to the bookshelf. Picked up her calculus textbook, sat back on the bed. That was my sign she was going to do real work and didn’t have time to bullshit. She held the book in her lap, a close fist on the cover. The sadness on her face there a moment then not, an aguacero monsoon type day cut short by some sun.
“How old do you think he is?” I asked, unwilling to move.
“Real old,” she said. “Thirty?”
I wondered if maybe she was right. We’d just turned 15. What had he done with two of my lifetimes? What to do with that much time ahead? Time stretched so far I got bored by all that possibility, all that eternity.
My bare foot pushed the book off Alma’s lap.
Thump, it said quietly on the floor. Alma nodded, defeated.
“Let’s go get some Kennedy’s,” she said.
“With what money?” I said.
She stood, looked at me over her shoulder.
“Like God gave me this ass so I would have to pay for shit.”
She smacked her own ass and it made a loud sound.
I stood, lifted my arm and glanced down the side of my body. Mine wasn’t Alma’s ass, at all. But it was still pretty good. I wondered if maybe God didn’t want me paying for shit either.
It got dark. We sat on his stoop. Well, I sat while Alma stood. Facing me, her back to the block. We hadn’t been there five minutes when one of the Tigueres (let’s call him Tiguere #1) asked Alma if she was hungry. She hesitated, made eye contact, then shook her head no. Dude went into Kennedy’s Fried Chicken quick-quick.
Most of the mounds of rice that fell earlier were gone, probly stuck under people’s shoes, or carried away in a stream of piss out of one of the Tiguere’s bulldogs.
About the grains stuck in his skin… Bet he probably leaned over and brushed them out of the way, never noticing the indentations left behind. I’m sure he never even thought about the grains of rice until he stepped on some, and they hurt his feet. Then, he would sweep them up, back curving, thick back straining, then straightening up.
Tiguere #1 came back. He gave Alma a 3-piece of white meat, French Fries and a Sprite in the can, so we knew what he wanted. What they all wanted.
To. get. it. in.
He handed me a chicken wing out of his own container. At my expression, Alma pressed her lips. Her eyes sparkles from the streetlight. Buy your own shit, Tiguere #1 said to me, pushing my shoulder playfully.
“Ain’t this a bitch,” I said, biting into the wing.
A small red bird flew over, in all that darkness, and went right down the ground where a few of the grains remained. I took a picture of the bird with my phone. Too dark. You couldn’t even make out how bright her feathers were, that red the shade you color inside a heart when you’re a little kid who doesn’t know any better than to waste whole days drawing hearts and day dreaming about whose last name you’ll have one day. She must have felt my eyes on her because she paused before she took one last go with her beak, before she decided enough. Flew away.
“Did you see that?”
Neither reacted.
Watching Alma with the Tigueres must be how people feel when they see a genius at work. I only just started studying her, understanding she knew things about how to deal with men that I never even thought about. For example, when this particular Tiguere watched her eat, she bit right into the meat, lips all sensual but eyes all innocent. She was eating the meat like she was having sex. But it was chicken, which made it hella gross. The Tiguere was mesmerized. Couldn’t look away.
For the 100th time that summer, he said that he wanted to take her out, on a proper date, somewhere downtown where the tables had white tablecloths and people would look at them like they didn’t belong.
“Fancy like you,” he said.
Talking loud enough that his friends, the other Tigueres jodiendo in the corner, whistled, started making jokes. Get yours. Get it, they all screamed. All a performance.
But Alma, she’s a gangster. She put the container down on the step next to me.
“Pablo,” she said, real quiet to Tiguere #1, “stop playing with me. Don’t get me excited when you know you not planning to come through.”
Pablo handed his chicken wing container to me, because now, now it was serious. I helped myself to another chicken wing.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Let’s stop playing around and do this for real.”
She tilted her head to the right.
“For real?” she said.
Did I make it up or did Pablo grow an inch right in front of our eyes?
He leaned into her and kissed her on the cheek. His friends were in a frenzy, laughing and clapping.
Dudes know how to make a getaway when the moment is right. He even forgot to take his chicken wing container as he strolled away from us. All swagger, all shoulders, shiny white expensive sneakers way out front.
“You really going out with him?” I asked.
“He’ll have to give me some money for my nails, and my hair, and a new outfit. And if all those things happen, then yeah, I’m going out with him. Why wouldn’t I?”
The street was busy that day but no music played which I missed. Ever since the white people who lived next to him had taken to calling the cops on us whenever we were outside for too long, if the music we played was too loud, everyone had stopped playing the music. We learned fast enough not to sit on their stoop.
“What’s different today?” I asked. He said the same thing he always says, I thought.
“What’s different is that nobody, nobody’s got shit new to say,” Alma said. “Time is running out.”
I was about to ask her what she meant, and why she said it all awkward like that, when Bocasucia came over. He took a chicken wing out of my container, and a French fry out of Alma’s. He swiveled the straw from her can and took a sip.
“Yours now,” she said, handing him the can. “I don’t know where that mouth has been.”
Bocasucia took a small notebook out of his back pocket. He had a pencil with a newly sharpened point and gave both to me. There was chicken grease on the cover of the small notebook, and when I moved it, the light from the nearby street lamp made it bright.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“So you can take notes,” he said. “I see you studying the Queen of the Chapiadoras. What is this, an internship?”
“Fuck an internship,” Alma said. “This is a Master Class like Oprah does.”
Only Alma would talk about Oprah. That lady 100 years old.
Phone in hand, I searched for the origin of the word Chapiadora. Dominican Urban Dictionary translated it to mean a gold digger.
Alma was offended. She took out her phone, which wasn’t the Obama phone, which had a better connection.
“You have to ask the right question in order to find the right answer,” she said to me, typing in her phone, all thumbs.
I made a big show of using the notebook. Learn to ask better questions, I said as I wrote. But her phone didn’t give her a better answer.
“Rule number one of being a chapiadora is that you don’t ever have sex,” she said. “Gold diggers have sex.”
Rule Numero Uno, I said loudly – don’t have sex if you want to be a Chapiadora. Note to self, I shouted even louder, there is no joy in this life.
“Listen,” she said.
By being a chapiadora, she explained, certain women helped men feel powerful and in control, especially in underserved communities, by allowing them to pay certain bills, or purchase certain items said women needed. But it’s different than being a gold digger, she insisted.
“How so?” Bocasucia asked. “You literally just defined gold digger.”
“Do you know what literally means?” Alma said to him.
I looked up literally.
“It means, to quote Kanye West,” Bocasucia spat out the meat he was eating and started to sing, doing a two-step dance up and down the steps, “I ain’t saying you a gold digger, but you ain’t messing with no broke niggas.”
“Can’t believe you quoting the Kanye part,” Alma said.
All summer, Bocasucia would slip an earbud into either Alma or my ear, playing and replaying the mix tape from his favorite rap group, Sin Nombre. All their music was free. Bocasucia was proud that in one song they had over a century of music from Blues to Hip Hop to Reggaeton. They sampled Kanye West’s song, which he had sampled from a blind guy who was long dead. I got what Alma meant. At least he should have quoted the actual new parts of the song but then it wouldn’t have been as funny. Because it was true. Because Alma really never messed with anyone who was broke. Well, before Bocasucia, that is.
“Like I was saying,” Alma went on, “gold diggers are self-interested. Chapiadoras…what we do, it’s practically volunteer work. I’m lifting our men up. Making them feel good in a world that wants to beat them down, lock them up, shoot them, bury them.”
Oh, here we go. She went off talking about mass incarceration and disproportionate and harsher punishment for men of color so I had to remind that bitch that just ‘cause her mother got her a Netflix subscription and she’d seen a few documentaries didn’t make her Mother Teresa. Alma is smart. She skipped two grades ahead of both Bocasucia and me. But Alma is no activist. She pointed to the notebook. I did as she said. RULE #2 – Let the men buy you stuff but only so they can feel good about themselves and not because you’re materialistic (or broke). There may be joy in this life, I said aloud.
On the steps down from us: chicken bones sucked clean white, empty Styrofoam containers. A green taxi pulled over and stopped beside the dented Mercedes Benz.
The prettiest girl any of us had ever seen came out of the taxi, and walked until she stopped in front of us, like she didn’t know how to say excuse me.
What was that smell? She smelled like expensive things that were soft and sweet. She was Japanese. I could tell because I know what Japanese people look like. Aoi sat next to me in homeroom every day last year. Long straight black hair, milky complexion – her and Aoi could be related which is probly racist so I didn’t say that aloud. This girl was wearing a white, short off the shoulder romper Alma and I had seen on Rent the Runway. But she didn’t look like the type of person who rented her clothes. Her legs were so thin, thinner than my arms.
Behind us, he opened the door. There was a rush of cold air that hit us, like a wave crashing, all spritz no foam. We heard old people music coming from his house. Everyone knew the kind of music he liked to play because the neighbors didn’t call the cops on him over it, not even when it was real loud. No words, just instruments going in round shapes that made me think of how I never met my Moms.
“Excuse us, ladies,” he said not moving from the doorframe. He had changed out of the white shorts and had long, loose pants on. The t-shirt he was wearing was black with white letters on it: Basquiat! it said, dotted “i” with a rainbow. I wrote a note to look that up later.
Bocasucia was the first to move out of the way, whistling at the girl, who tried hard not to make eye contact with any of us. Alma gave the girl her back because the girl had no ass and someone had to let her know she wasn’t that dope.
I didn’t move. She stepped over me, almost tripping.
He closed the door as soon as she went in. It got quiet and hot on us really fast.
I felt a burning in my eye.
Bocasucia and Alma both stared at me.
“Are you about to cry?” Bocasucia asked.
“How can you cry over someone who doesn’t know you exist?” Alma asked me, amazed, talking over him.
“How should I know?” I responded. “All I know is that I love him.”
Bocasucia smacked his knee.
“You,” he said, pointing a long index finger, “a good chapiadora will not make.”
“The rules of the jungle are pretty simple,” Alma said, padding me on the shoulder like I was a stupid little girl. Too stupid to know any better than to waste all day drawing hearts. “Eat or be eaten,” she and Bocasucia said at the same time.
Aguelita woke me up with an empty Tupperware container in her hand the next day.
“Vamos,” she said. “Levantate.”
I put the sheet over my head. Get up. Rise. No common sounds with English words. This is the way we talk to each other. She in Spanish, me in English.
Cane way ahead, an extension of her arm, lifted the sheet off my body.
No need to clear the crust from my eye to know she planned to have me make mangu from the boiled plaintains, then fry eggs, then fry cheese, and then fry salami. I could smell the red onions on her hands. By now, she’d already cut everything up, left it all in small mounds, so that I would do the cooking. Practice, she would say, forcing me to use un-manicured nails to lift the transparent paper off the salami without leaving a single nail mark behind. How else are you going to find a husband? she always asked.
I sat up, disoriented, yawned.
“Cepillate,” she said.
I got up and went to the bathroom to do as she said. Mirror, my face, same-o dirty teeth.
In the apartment, I was different than outside. I listened and didn’t talk back; I did as I was told. Last year, after her stroke turned her body soft, mine cold, Aguelita told me to remember we only had each other. I wanted to say not true because I had Alma, too. But it didn’t seem like the right thing to say.
“Despues del desayuno,” she said, “a limpiar.”
On the toilet, I stared at my phone, wondering how much longer it would take for Alma and me to figure out a way to get hella far. We had a plan to move in together, get jobs downtown at a clothing store or a beauty salon, and live our lives without ever coming back to the block. My phone flashed with a new text. The word of the day was sequacious an adjective meaning you imitate or follow, serve without reason. Or you follow with smooth and logic regularity. See? Same word meaning the opposite damn thing. I deleted that one, useless they agreed, because they said it was archaic. Archaic are words no one ever uses because they were probly ridiculous words to begin with.
Why send those out, word of the day? Why?
I was tempted to click on the unsubscribe link.
Then, another flash, another text. The word of the day, tsuris. This one a noun, meaning trouble, woe. I liked how close it was to my own name. Maybe I’d make everyone start calling me Nuris-Tsuris the troublemaker. Never mind. I could see Alma and Bocasucia laughing at me for being so corny. Sometimes I guessed at how to pronounce the words I didn’t know. Hadn’t guessed right not even one time!
“A limpiar,” Aguelita mumbled when I came out of the bathroom.
Today, cleaning the house meant emptying out the fridge and using an old rag drenched in Clorox to clean each shelf, pull out each drawer, and take whatever dry, deflated, moldy, dank vegetables we’d somehow forgotten about. Cleaning meant wiping dust from all the surfaces, including the small side table next to the living room sofa. I would wipe under it, around it, all while trying not to look at the picture of Moms, who had the same face as me, or Aguelito, who died just a couple of months before Aguelita’s stroke. That miracle candle Aguelita lit in front of both pictures burned day and night. I picked up Moms picture, lined up her sad, black eyes, to my sad, black eyes.
Aguelito was the one who spoke English, who knew what was what. Your grandma is the light of my eyes, he used to say. I live to take care of her, he used to say. But she was the one who always did everything for him, sun up to moon up, up to and including the day he died.
The Tupperware was filled with Dominican deliciousness: he’d never tasted a mangu smoother, salami fried crispier, or cheese any more gooey and golden. Bet he liked his eggs fried over, hard, I whispered to myself. Aguelita gave me a warning look, no sea freca, she said.
The onions were done last: sautéed with just a bit of vinegar and garlic. Aguelita gave me a proud smile before she closed the lid. What she couldn’t see, she could surely tell by how it smelled.
“Escribele algo,” she said.
Bocasucia’s notebook came in handy. Page ripped off way easy.
“Disculpame,” she said for me to write. “Perdoname por el daño a tu carro.”
My grandma is sorry about your car, I wrote. I didn’t translate daño because it means pain, or hurt, and you can’t cause pain to a car. Damage? Maybe that’s the right word.
Beyoncé would say be bold, girl. Forget about the damage.
I can think of a few ways to make it up to you, I added.
Rough hands grabbed the paper off my hands, held it in hers, eyes more useless than sequacious. No understanding.
“Cambiate,” she said.
The fumes from the Clorox made me nauseous.
But even in spite of that, a smile broke my face. Change? Yes!
“Si!” I said. Rushing to the bathroom, thinking of anything in my closet that would make me look half-as-pretty as that girl last night, with that creamy white skin, and her pretty straight hair and those thin-thin legs.
Down the stairs, I thought about Beyoncé. The Tupperware was hot. Hot enough beads of water were on the inside of the lid. In one of her songs, Beyoncé said that if he likes it, then he should put a ring on it. Which sounded really good, especially when Alma and I did that hand twist thing while grinding our hips. We’d keep grinding until we could feel everybody’s eyes on us: the old women who thought we were putas and the young girls who actually were, but most of all, it was the guys whose eyes were on us, heavy like damp rags.
The sounds of music and noise were already loud outside, Fernandito Villalona (singing songs from 50 years ago about how he can’t get rid of the desire to kiss the girl who left him) out one window and Drake (asking if Keke loves him) out the next window. In the same apartment! That was the story of our lives. In the real world, music never blended well. It didn’t blend at all. I could hear it through the half open windows on the way down. Only if we went on YouTube and found people like us, like Sin Nombre, who were blending the world past and present to help it make sense. Sometimes, I wondered about writing songs. Wondered how many words I’d have to learn to make something beautiful and true.
Beyonce wrote a lot of her own songs. No one except me played Beyonce. Not even Alma. Sometimes, I wondered where Beyoncé grew up. I’d spent all the hours watching videos. I stayed on her Instagram, on Twitter, on every single place I could find her even Facebook which is for old people. It’s hella crazy she’d been making music for longer than we’d been alive. I loved her face from when she was little, didn’t seem she lived that differently than us, how even then you could tell she was born to be a star. She was born to do incredible things. When Jay Z proposed to her, he gave her a ring that was worth millions of dollars. Imagine! I had never seen anyone get a ring put on it before getting pregnant. Some people got married, sure, but it was a quick thing. On the train, then back up in time for some moro and pernil at somebody’s Moms house. Alma was the only girl I knew who seemed like the kind of girl who could get a dude to put a ring on it. No pregnancy required.
When I came out of the building, Alma was screaming in Bocasucia’s face.
“It’s none of your business who I tell,” Alma said.
“She’s going to find out anyway,” he said, real calm. “It’s real fucked up if she doesn’t hear it from you. But you’re right.”
He took his palms and wiped them off each other, like there was dust on it.
I walked up.
The last thing I needed to hear was how Alma let Bocasucia smell it, taste it, and then, probly, by the level of red on her face, let him do a lot more than that. Bocasucia? Who had nothing she could possibly get out of him. Certainly, no-thing that would end up on a wedding finger. He had a nice mouth, and his skinny body sometimes surprised because he’s stronger than he looks but for real. He ain’t got shit but a stolen supermarket cart.
Alma looked at me. She was wondering what I’d heard. She whistled at my face, at my clothes.
I told her Aguelita sent me to take some food to him as an apology.
“Do you want to come?” I asked her, slowly.
“I’m good,” she said. “But you should wipe your face a bit. You got a lot going on.”
“I’m good,” I said, “hater.”
Up the stoop, I stood in front of his door. I rang the bell. His door was made of black metal (like bars on the fire escapes in our building) with a thick, clear glass. I could see all the way into his house, through the living room, to the kitchen. His back was to me, and he was standing in front of a huge canvas, messing around with a painting that looked like it was already finished. The girl from last night was standing behind him, wearing his black t-shirt – which reminded me I had to look up what Basquiat! meant. She drank out of a tall skinny glass. A flute, like the instrument, used to drink champagne or mimosas. It’d been a word of the day last week. Her black hair actually had blonde highlights in it, and those legs didn’t look as thin in the bright. Must have been the heels made her look extra skinny. Whatever. I got my heels on.
I picked a short skirt I’d borrowed the week before from Alma. It was short enough anyone standing at the bottom of his stoop would see my underwear. The tank top was black, with white bold letters: Who runs the world?
I had bright red lipstick on, eyeliner, blush. I even tried some contouring with the eyeliner on my cheek to give my face more definition. My stomach gurgled, loud. I felt the cold sweat from a familiar stomachache as it popped beads from my belly to the top of my lip, my forehead, my nose. See? This is why we never ate at Kennedy’s Fried Chicken.
I rang the bell again.
The girl went off to the side, up a set of stairs, laughing behind a hand at something he said. About me? I pulled the shirt down a little, wished the girl tripped up the stairs, broke a front tooth. Why am I being mean to a girl I never met? Alma would ask. Challenge the structures that make us think we’re competing against each other, she would say.
He opened the door with that a smile which lingered for her, not me. Then his smile went away. He looked me up and down, and his forehead wrinkled.
I pushed the Tupperware toward him. Surprised, he opened the lid and some of the moisture slid off and fell on the floor. Drops landed on a few grains of rice that were on the floor. His eyes closed against the smell.
I gave him the note, a folded piece of paper. A note he didn’t open right away.
Thank you, he said, before he closed the door. Through the glass I saw him unfold the paper. He turned fast, opened the door hard enough the doorknob hit the wall behind it, made a dull sound.
“This is so dangerous,” he said, showing me my handwriting. Penmanship will never be your strong suit, a teacher said when I was little.
His hand went up to his forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. His voice was the gentlest thing I’d felt in so long, maybe ever.
I stared at the ground down the steps, noticed how someone must have swept the chicken bones we left last night. Who sweeps outside the house but not inside?
He was waiting for me to say something. So quiet, those eyes on me. Not wanting, not heavy. Light.
“Maybe I could come by later. After she’s gone?”
He was so disappointed. I could see it.
“You shouldn’t come around here anymore,” he said. “At all.”
His voice was firm, serious.
I left him there, by the door.
I ran.
Let me say it. Because I know. If the girl hadn’t been there, he would have invited me in. He would have. If she hadn’t ruined everything, I would have gone inside, and we would have kissed. If she hadn’t been there and my stomach didn’t make me rush away before he had a chance to take a real look at me, he would have invited me to sit and I would have been the one with a flute in my hand. He wouldn’t have minded that he had lived twice my life. If she hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have thought I was stupid.
I ran home fast. Fast. Bocasucia and Alma were gone.
Out of a window of our building, a grownup yelled at her kid down the block.
Getdafuckbackherenaoooohhhh! Kid turned around, gave her two middle fingers sideways facing each other, dueling like swords, then ran the rest of the way, baggy pants falling, ass showing. He had dark marks on his butt. Scars from a belt, no doubt.
Up the stairs, relief. When I came out of the bathroom, Aguelita was waiting for me. “Alma esta aqui,” she said.
I wanted to cry, I was so relieved. See? Alma always there when I needed her. I had to tell her everything. She’d call me an asshole but hey. She’d make me feel better. I went into my room, she wasn’t there.
Alma sat in the living room looking like a church lady, fingers intertwined on top of her knees.
“Do not go in there,” I said, fanning a hand in front of my nose, pointing to the bathroom.
Alma scratched behind her ear, nervous. She didn’t laugh at my joke.
In the corner, the candle in front of my Moms picture flickered, like someone was blowing on it. But there was no wind. Aguelita came out the kitchen and made her way to her room; by the smell made its way behind her I could tell she was boiling rice.
I sat next to Alma.
“Who died?” I asked.
Alma turned her face toward me but didn’t make eye contact.
She said she got into college. This accelerated program would let her finish her last year of high school while she started college.
“I’m going upstate,” she said, moving away from me, standing up.
There was an itch in my throat, at the bottom, on the inside. How to get to it?
I made a weird noise in my throat, like a cough. It didn’t help.
“You’re leaving me here?” I pushed out, when I could.
She took the phone out of her back pocket. But nobody was calling. There was no text alert.
“I gotta get the hell out of here,” she said. Her body turned to the stack of books from my summer school class, the one I hadn’t bothered going to.
“Fuck you,” I said.
We both knew that wasn’t my way.
She shook her head hard. Finally, eye contact because now there was something she wanted from me.
“It wasn’t about you,” she said.
She waited for a while. That flame on the candle got smaller and bigger, changed shapes like it was music.
“You know what rent costs downtown?” she said. “It wasn’t a real plan.”
Alma said that nobody, nobody got shit new to say. She’s not right. There are new things that people say all the time, new things that some of us have no idea what they mean. When Aguelita had the stroke last year, I had to wipe every time she took a shit, up until she was strong enough to do it. One time, I made a face because it was disgusting. She saw it. Gave me that new smile. Said it didn’t bother her as much when she did it for me when I was a baby, maybe because back then it didn’t smell so bad. I probly should have said sorry. Probly was the right word. She tried to get off the toilet on her own but she couldn’t. She still needed my help.
First time I ever thought of her, inside herself, locked in.
First time I ever thought of myself, inside myself, free.
“Si tu Aguelito tuviese vivo, el me ayudaria sin cara,” she said.
But I knew it wasn’t true. Aguelito wouldn’t have taken care of her.
He. never. had.
She worked hard to get to normal after that but it looked impossible to both of us. Until it wasn’t. Until she could get around and I didn’t have to do as much for her, she could get back to doing more for me. And she showed me sometimes you gotta help yourself. Sometimes all you got is self.
After Alma left, I went to Aguelita’s room to tell her that she was right, that we were the only ones we had. She was on her bed. It was dark in her room. I went around the bed. She was so still I felt that cold seeping. Leaned in, touched her face.
She opened her eyes.
“Me necesitas?” she asked.
“Nah,” I said, “sleep. I’ll figure it out.”
I went in the kitchen and checked on the rice. It was done. That would be our dinner tonight with some of the left over fried eggs, fried salami, fried cheese. I turned off the stove.
Outside, the grownup had caught up to her kid, was dragging him by the collar of his t-shirt back to the entrance, punching his face like he was a grown man. The other grownups on the corner yelled. Dale, dale, teach him who’s the boss, they said. Some of them clapped.
Bocasucia was not in front of the building, or at the corner bodega. I avoided walking up the steepest block on Sugar Hill. Obviously. I finally texted him, made sure to include no words, just the three question marks like he said, added that emoji. You know the one with a puckered mouth blowing a heart? He wrote back with the quickness. That felt good.
I’m home alone, he wrote. Let yourself in.
On my way, another alert from word of the day. Never got three in twenty-four hours before. Didn’t even bother reading the last one. Just clicked on the link to unsubscribe. How many new words does a body need to know?
Contributor Notes
Cleyvis Natera immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child and grew up in Harlem, NY. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College and a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from New York University. She is a 2019-2020 PEN America Writing For Justice Fellow. She is a recipient of the 2019 Carol Houck Smith Returning Contributor Award in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a fiction fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Cleyvis received merit based writing scholarships to the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the VONA Voices Foundation. She is a proud alum of the Disquiet International Literary Program. Cleyvis is hard at work on her first, “Neruda on the Park.”
